Time-Lost Memories
by Endeverous
Summary: A Shintaro POV fic of Lost Time Memory. Rated M for murder and suicide.
1. Route 00

I thought about her a lot.

Almost obsessively, one might say. It wasn't exactly something a normal person might have done, but it wasn't like there was much that was normal about me to begin with. I'd always had a hard time with emotions; I never really knew what to feel and how to feel it. I didn't quite understand what emotions were supposed to be like.

Ayano . . . made that clearer for me. She'd been a light in my life, one that let me realize that I had, in fact, been dwelling in a deep darkness. She'd shown me how to be happy. She'd let me know exactly how crushing sadness could be.

I had to tell myself to remember the happiness. The sadness and regret came back all on their own, all these painful things she'd given me names for.

I was sad that she died, sad about how she died. I was sad that I didn't help her when she had so clearly needed it. I was sad that she'd left and taken the light with her.

I regretted how I'd treated her. How I'd shut her out and put her down and left her all alone. The shame and the guilt ran on constant loop in my mind, blaming me for everything.

One moment stuck in my head in particular. I shut my eyes and I could see it, clear as day.

It was late afternoon, sometime in August. We were heading home from school, up on the crest of the hill we walked over every day. The heat of the summer was lingering in the air like it wasn't quite ready to let us free just yet, distorting the horizon and making my eyes sting.

She was a few paces behind me. When I looked back at her, she skipped up, smiling, and put her hand on my shoulder. I gave her a look, but she ignored it. "Don't mind me," she just said, tilting her head at that carefree angle, almost acting like she wanted to distract me from how she was touching me.

"God, just go away," I scoffed, brushing her hand away and moving ahead. _The hell was she on about?_ She had a tendency to do things like that, but she was usually a lot more shy about it.

"No," she mumbled, dashing forward to grab my hand. "I won't leave you," she said firmly, and when I looked in her eyes, I saw something I couldn't identify. For a fraction of a second, I was afraid. I didn't know what I was scared of, I didn't know what she was trying to tell me.

I didn't know. And maybe, deep inside me, buried under the years of apathy and the walls keeping anyone and anything away from me, that was what scared me most of all.

"You're so annoying!" I yanked my hand out of her grip and shoved it into my pocket. I didn't want to feel that any more. I didn't want to even look at her.

Ignoring her silence, I just walked away, forging a path through the hazy air. I didn't turn back. She couldn't have said anything to make it less weird.

But, and this was the really weird thing, she didn't say anything at all. She didn't call out to me, or cry, or scream or anything. She was just . . . silent. And as I walked off, she just faded away in the wake of my frustration.

I guess, looking back, that's how she died too.


	2. Route XX

I'd thought about suicide a lot.

Back in the day, at the start of my stint as a shut-in, I'd thought about killing myself pretty much weekly. It hadn't ever been my full plan, but more of an alternative, the option I would have turned to if I couldn't have forced myself to live another day.

Apparently, I'd made it this far. Living still wasn't great, but it was more bearable than it had been. Dreams were the only thing I found real comfort in, and I was not going to give those up any time soon. I'd shifted to a listless life fuelled by a burning need to keep remembering. The thing was, it kept me suffering, too.

Absently, I rolled out of bed and settled into the worn cushioning of my chair. My hands found the keyboard and mouse without me needing to put them there. I saw the screen illuminate as I went through the motions of opening up my browser and clicking on the first message board of the day, but I was lost in my head. It had been the dream where we were walking home again. We never seemed to get anywhere, though. Just walked together, talking the whole time. It was always sunset. I wondered why.

I don't know how long I spent like that, half-aware of what was in front of me, half in my head. All I know is that at some point, Ene broke the monotony and froze the screen, planting herself in the middle of my monitor. Finally, I was jarred to recognizing something real, unable to mindlessly scroll through the meaningless words. I looked at her with vacant eyes. She looked at me like she was watching someone die. "Master . . . " She clasped her hands together and hunched her shoulders awkwardly. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I shot back. "Why?"

She exhaled, throwing her eyes downward. "I'm worried."

I cast her a glare. "About what?"

"You just . . . you just seem so sad all the time."

"I'm _fine_." Not like she really cared. It was probably just another one of her ploys to distract me. "It's not going to work, you know."

Accusatory surprise filled her eyes and her pigtails shot out. "What? I'm being serious!"

I scoffed and turned my chair away. "Bullshit."

"Master, I—"

"Just shut up already!" I whirled back around and stared at her. She looked genuinely concerned. Those might have even been real tears in her eyes.

"Master?"

But I was sick of her already. I needed to dream. "Just let me sleep." I pushed the desk away and fell into bed, not bothering to take off my hoodie. "She's waiting," I mumbled into my pillow, already feeling sleep tugging at my mind.

I could nap on command. It was pretty much necessary to keep myself sane at this point. Within minutes, I was out like a light.

I dreamt of Ayano again. She was all I dreamt of these days.

We were in class, same as usual. She was sitting beside me, her red scarf outlined against the orange light outside. Her hair fluttered in a soft breeze I couldn't feel, sending a gentle smell of flowers and laundry soap toward me. My chest ached with the feeling of familiarity.

"Hey." She cocked her head and smiled, warm and welcoming.

"Hey," I smiled back. "How are you?"

"I'm good. Had some issues with our last quiz, though." She pulled a paper out of her bag and laid it on her desk, pointing to a question marked with a big red 0. "How do you do number five? I just can't work it out."

I glanced over. It was simple algebra. "Really?" I raised an eyebrow at her. She giggled bashfully. I pointed at the paper. "You just rearrange and solve for x. We've done a million of these."

"Sorry, sorry." Her cheeks turned pink. "I guess I just forget."

She stared ahead at the chalkboard, a gentle if hazy smile on her face. She'd just started to fold over the corner of her paper to make another paper crane I wouldn't keep when a blaring alarm jarred me awake.

My eyes shot open to find the white ceiling above me colored blue with artificial light. Pushing the panic down, I sat up and cast a withering glare at my computer. "What?"

The alarm cut off and Ene cleared the screen, leaving just her standing there with her arms firmly crossed in an X. "I'm not letting you do this anymore!"

I groaned and pushed the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to imprint Ayano's smile more firmly into my memory. It was already fuzzy around the edges. I was terrified to lose any more. "Fuck off."

"You can't do this to yourself!"

A sudden feeling of rage propelled me to my feet and over to my computer, arms braced against the desk. "You don't understand!" _They're all I have left of her. I know wishing won't get me anywhere, so I don't care if I rot away, as long as I can hang onto the memories. I can't let her leave me again._

"I understand enough." She swam up so her face filled the screen. "You're living in your past. That's what you're doing, isn't it? You can't handle anything but that, so you can't even see tomorrow, let alone today, right?"

"I'm fine with that," I said through my teeth. I pushed my hands against the monitor, right over her digital neck like I could strangle her. She was so right, and I just wanted her to stop talking. I just wanted to make her stop talking.

"She's dead," Ene said. "You know she's dead. She's not coming back. There's no point in—"

"Just **shut up**!" A burning flash of anger lanced through my brain. Suddenly, inexplicably, I fell through the screen, my hands landing around her throat. I nearly let go out of sheer disbelief, but in the instant when my eyes flicked away to look at my surroundings, she tried to wriggle free. Almost on instinct, I gripped tighter, causing pained, desperate gasps to come from her mouth.

"Mas—" she choked out, but I couldn't listen, I didn't care, I wasn't letting go, she was nothing but an obstacle, a distraction, something tying me to the real world, the world that was cold and cruel and took everyone and didn't have _her_ . . .

I don't know how long I held on, but I know that the only reason I stopped was because her neck shattered in my hands, taking the rest of her with it. Fragments of blue sweater burst into the red air and I put my arms up to shield my face like there was any protection from what I'd just done and then I was back in my room, panting and looking down at my hands in shock.

My mind was numb for a second, then sudden understanding broke through my daze.

"God," I whispered, appalled at myself. "No. No, come back."

The monitor was blank.

"I can't . . ."

My throat seized up, my legs sent me backward against my will.

"No, no, no!

"Please, Ene, I know it takes more than that to kill you, come back, don't go!" My voice had risen to a shriek and I was too shocked to cry, my head in my hands and my eyes wide with panic and staring at the floor but seeing nothing.

"Not again," I whispered, my heart pounding and my mind threatening to break.

 _They were both so fucking stubborn._

I couldn't think. I couldn't do anything.

Then it hit me, hit me in the chest and froze my racing heart and shoved my back against my bed.

I couldn't keep living. I couldn't force myself to survive this.

I could choose plan B.

Numbly, though fully aware of what I was about to do, I hauled open the drawer beside me. There was no point in living. There wouldn't be a point.

 _Finally._

The scissors had red handles. Tears whose emotions I couldn't pinpoint fell down my cheeks at the raw color scraping against my battered heart. I didn't believe in the afterlife, but I wasn't doing this to see her. I just couldn't survive alone.

I pushed myself up onto my bed and felt for my breakneck pulse. It thumped steadily against my thumb, right where I knew it would be.

I had one thought as I held the scissors high: I would look like Ayano. I was happy dying with that in mind.

Taking a breath, I brought the point of the scissors down hard into my carotid.

The last thing I saw was blood on my hands.

* * *

I woke up.

It was hazy and orange.

It was familiar.

To be honest, the shock of where I awoke outweighed the shock of waking up at all.

I was on the floor of our classroom.

With a sharp breath, my vision cleared and focused on the person standing in front of me. A woman, her dark hair tied up with a red ribbon, wearing a long black robe. She was looking at me with contempt in her red eyes.

"Retaining," she said, a sort of musing apathy in her voice. "But . . . that must mean . . . you don't know?"

Her words meant nothing to me. I only understood one thing: She wasn't Ayano.

I don't know why I was disappointed.

Paying the woman no mind, I bowed my head down and sank into the rising panic of my thoughts.

Was I dead? This was nowhere near my room, and I was sure that I had stabbed myself in the neck. I don't think I could have imagined that pain.

But I could still think. I still felt the past pressing on my chest. The deaths of Ayano, Haruka, Ene, they all sucked the air out of my lungs and pulled tears to my eyes and crushed my happiness under their weight. My own death felt like nothing compared to theirs, felt nothing like the guilt and despair carved into me from her words on the street, the hopelessness when he told me he wouldn't get better, the feeling of her neck breaking in my hands.

Thinking of that, I noticed that my own neck was fine. I ran a finger over the spot I was confident I'd bled out from to find it normal. No wound, no gushing artery, no passing out from blood loss. I had just entertained the thought that I may not have been dead at all when I saw motion ahead.

It was . . . me?

But this me wore a red jersey, one I'd long abandoned in the back of my closet. He was walking with purpose. He had something close to spirit in his eyes.

He could not have been me.

He passed by me, I blinked, and the woman was gone. Standing in her place by her desk by the window was—

"Ayano," I called, my voice breaking.

She turned as I rose to my feet. Her smile was the same, like warm summer sun. The gauzy curtains flapped soundlessly around her, the empty window framing her body as if beckoning her to jump again.

I couldn't breathe.

Her smile didn't falter when she spoke. "I died. I'm sorry." Her voice sounded just like it did all those long days ago. My dreams didn't do her justice.

"No," came my choked reply, but I couldn't get to her fast enough, she wasn't getting any closer. _No, it's my fault, you told me it's my fault, don't apologize!_

"Shall we say goodbye?"

"No!" I screamed, reaching for her, trying to grab her scarf, her hand, anything before she disappeared again. "Don't leave me!"

Ayano tilted her head, that gesture that always made her seem so innocent, so carefree, and gave me one last gentle laugh before her body shattered, the shards of her gleaming in the sunset's light.

"No!"

I pounded the crumbling classroom floor, my last memory of her tainted by panic, her smile twisted in my mind by the words that had come out of it.

"No . . . Ayano . . ."

The world fell apart while I sobbed.

* * *

I woke up again.

It was familiar this time as well.

I was too spent to cry as I stared at the blank white ceiling I'd died under.

But I wasn't dying anymore. My throat was intact. I could breathe, breathe in the same air I'd breathed for two years. That more than anything told me it was real.

I was alive.

I was alone.

My computer was silent and dark. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm sounded. Even my mom and sister weren't there.

With numb, vacant eyes, I looked to the clock-radio on my nightstand. August 15. 12:33.

She died that day, too.


	3. Route 01

I'd thought about life a lot.

At first, it was my own special version of hell. I thought about Ayano. I only thought about Ayano. My listless days were filled with painful memories, self-destructive guilt, and my best attempt at drowning it all in the Internet, at the same time terrified to do anything that might make me forget her. I would dwell for hours on contemplations of suicide, trying to weigh my miserable existence against needing hers to be carried on somehow. I still wonder how I made it out alive.

At some point, it became habitual. I would wake up, spend hours browsing through message boards, always keeping her in the back of my mind. I lived the life I couldn't afford to have in reality through my keyboard. She haunted my dreams, but I could bear it. The scales were finally tipped in favour of living. I didn't need to force myself to remember her smile; every memory of her was tattooed on my brain, tingeing my loneliness with the red of her scarf and filling my dreams with the sound of her laugh. Life was tolerable like this. I figured I could make it out one day, if I didn't rot away first.

Then Ene showed up, and it went right back to torture. She'd lock me out of my accounts and make me beg for the passwords back. She'd wake me up at 3 a.m. just to keep me on my toes. She'd upload my private files to public boards and cackle as I tried desperately to pick up the pieces of my online life. It was a fresh kind of personalized hell, one that made living terrible but not as bad as it had been. I never really wanted to die, not like before. I still thought of Ayano, but it didn't tear me up quite so badly, and I'd actually managed to move on a little. Ene had paradoxically tethered my life to the one thing she could take away. I was living for my computer now, though the memories of before still gave me a good reason to keep going. Ayano would always be in my dreams.

Today was no different.

I woke up to the sounds of Ene zooming through some online game, Ayano's insistence on staying still rattling around my mind. With a bleary groan, I pushed my hair out of my eyes and looked over to the screen. Ene spotted my motion and closed the window she'd been playing on. "Good morning, Master," she said cheerily, moving to sit on a desktop app. "And it even is morning, too!" She kicked a leg in the direction of the clock and shook her ponytails out, grinning. "Will wonders never cease?"

I groaned. "I'd have a more regular sleep schedule if you didn't wake me up all the time." I rolled out of bed and hunted for clean clothes.

She giggled to herself. "But you'd get so bored! I like to think I make your life a little more exciting."

I turned around, shirt in hand, to glare at her. She just swung her legs happily.

"You're in a good mood," I remarked, biting my tongue almost instantly. I knew to never comment on her behaviour. She was volatile. Any stray word could set her off and I'd be out of my files for a week. "Shockingly," I mumbled under my breath.

She huffed and opened up the game again. "Sounds like someone doesn't want his YouTube account."

I pulled the shirt on, bowing to the computer. "I'm very sorry." I also knew better than to half-ass apologies.

With another huff, a victory sound byte played. "I just got a perfect score on this. Don't rain on my parade, Master."

"Usually your joy involves a lot more of my pain." I sat down in my chair and rolled up to the desk.

"But you make it so easy!" Ene grinned up at me as I opened my web browser. As soon as the window popped up, though, she closed it down.

I tried again, she closed it again. The tab with her game on it remained open, and as she swam over and restarted it I clicked on the browser icon once more, but she reached a hand over and hit the X, undeterred.

I took a breath. Evidently she wasn't in the mood to let me go online. I wasn't really in the mood to fight. So I figured there would be no harm in trying to do this peacefully to start. "Please, can I open my browser?" I bowed again, lower and longer, only raising my eyes after a few seconds to gauge her reaction.

She glanced over her shoulder at me, her eyes angled dangerously. I bit my lip, bracing for the worst, but she just scoffed and rolled her eyes. "You're pathetic, you know that, Master? Fine, have your message boards. Not like they're going to do anything for you."

"Thanks." I sighed in relief when she left the window alone.

In my temporary respite from antagonization, I flung out my arms out to either side of my monitor, stretching them. But I'd forgotten about the open bottle of soda I had put beside my mousepad, lying directly in the path of my incoming stretch. Unable to pull my arms back quickly enough, I could only watch in horror as my elbow bowled right through the base of the bottle, sending a glimmering arc of soda through the air, which landed right on the keyboard with a devastating splash.

The keyboard was unsalvageable. In the end, after forcing myself to stop crying for the life lost, she'd goaded me into actually going shopping. I absolutely hated it. The heat, the noise, the people. It was all too much for a shut-in like me to bear. The trek to the store had nearly killed me, and the crowds made me want to turn around and run back home, heat be damned. Not to mention the interaction with the saleslady . . .

"Stop, please," I groaned into my earbud mic as Ene played back the recorded clip of me mumbling about PC equipment for the fiftieth time. "Just let me die."

She cackled in my ear. "No wonder she couldn't understand you! Even I have trouble sometimes, and I've been deciphering you for over a year now!"

I turned my eyes that were rapidly filling with tears to the ceiling in despair, willing some benevolent deity to guide me. "I just want a keyboard."

"Why not go ask her again?" Ene erupted into more laughter, making my phone buzz in my hand. I considered dropping it to spite her, but I just sighed and scanned further down the aisle, eyes landing on a shelf stocked with peripherals. Without much care for price, I grabbed the first keyboard I could reach.

"See?" I held up the box in triumph. "This wasn't too-"

Suddenly, a thunderous boom shook the shelves. My ears barely had time to start ringing before I whipped around and caught the outline of a man dressed in black tactical gear rappelling down from the ceiling, a gun in hand. I heard a faint hiss, saw gas rising from a canister at my feet, and unceremoniously crumpled to the ground as my vision blacked out.

* * *

When I woke up, Ene was yelling through my earbud.

"-on, I know you can pull through! Give me an M! Give me an A! Give me an-"

I winced and leaned to the side, trying to get away from my own ear, kicking a little as I tried to push her grating voice away and found my hands tied behind my back. " _Shut up_ ," I hissed into the mic once I realized I couldn't do anything else.

She gasped loudly and I cringed again. It sounded like she'd cranked the volume. "You're awake? Finally! Master, these guys are total assholes. Everyone on the floor's being held hostage. They want a billion yen, and they're threatening to take out the whole city with a bomb if they don't get it."

I took a moment to digest the information, staring blankly at who I realized were my captors once it all clicked. There were about a half dozen men in the same military gear patrolling the floor. Most of them were holding guns.

I hung my head and sighed. Of course it had to be the one day I leave the house. Of course that would be the day I get captured by terrorists. Of fucking _course_ it would be.

"Master, do you have a plan to get us out of this? Because I've been trying to come up with something, but you've gotta find a way out of that tape first if we want anything to work."

"Figured as much," I mumbled through gritted teeth. What could she have been planning? Charging half a dozen armed men with a cell phone? Was she crazy? Scratch that, of course she was crazy, but just how crazy _was_ she?

I started to evaluate the situation, pushing past the rising panic. I was on the floor in a group of about two dozen other shoppers. We all had our hands bound, and though the terrorists were certainly intimidating, most of them didn't seem to be paying us much attention. A couple were talking in low voices, and one, seemingly the leader, judging by his guards, was sitting on a shelf looking at his phone.

"They're not really looking at us," I muttered. "Wonder what that's about."

"Does it matter?" She huffed. "Get your hands free, then plug your phone in. The security here is all on the same computer network, right? So I can get the shutters up if I can just get into the system."

"Gonna need a distraction for that." It was a good plan, and I would have more than likely come up the same thing, but I couldn't see any way to carry it out. "Unless you can do anything, I guess-"

"Whatcha muttering about?"

I jerked around at the voice. It was a young-ish guy, looking at me with extreme interest in his angled eyes. He leaned forward and shook the hood of his black jacket back. "Cause you look like you're thinking pretty hard there. Trying to come up with an escape plan or something?"

". . . yeah," I admitted, not sure how he was acting so cavalier about this. "But it's not gonna get anywhere at this rate."

"Need a distraction? Cause, like, I could help you out with that." He tilted his head, his blond hair falling over his eyes. "So what do you say?"

"That'd be great," I said, sarcasm seeping through. Like he could help me. He was tied up with the rest of us. What could he do?

A sudden smile overtook the guy's face. "Kay, great!" He pulled out his phone - hands unbound, how _was_ that? - and shot off a text. "You should be good to go in a bit. You'll know when you're clear."

"Um, okay." I kept scanning the floor, trying to pick out some pattern I could exploit in the guards' patrols, not ready to rely on some stranger's alleged backup. Unfortunately, the patrols seemed to be pretty random. I cursed the world in general for putting me here and not in front of a screen, playing a video game. NPC terrorists would have made this whole thing a lot easier.

I noticed that Ene had gone quiet in my ear, which I was both thankful for and suspicious of. At least she wasn't distracting me.

The guy sighed loudly. "Maan, not so much as a thank you. I go to all the trouble of helping you out and you don't even trust me."

"You haven't really given me a good reason to," I said through my teeth. "And shut up. You're going to attract attention."

"I'll be fine. Just hang on a little," he said lightly. "Any second now."

"Dude, what is your deal? Do you want to get killed?" My voice started rising, the panic finally breaking through my mental barriers. "I don't know how I'm going to get out of this! They've got a bomb, my family might die! You should be taking this more seriously!"

It was only when I paused to breathe that I realized that everyone in the room was staring at me, including the lead terrorist. He thumped over in heavy combat boots, finger on the trigger of his rifle. "You. Kid. What the hell are you up to?"

Terror overcame me. I froze, petrified, under the gaze of this man. A whimper escaped my lips.

"Now would be good," I heard the guy call behind me.

"You too. What are you-"

His incoming interrogation was interrupted by a shelf of monitors crashing to the floor.

"Wha-!"

Another display fell over, this one a few meters to the right. He aimed his weapon at the empty air behind it. "You, whoever you are, show yourself!"

As a tower of microwave ovens toppled onto one of the terrorists, I felt a slight tugging at my wrists. When I turned, the guy was slipping something back into his pocket, a broad grin on his face. "Well, off you go!"

Looking at the fallen militants, I felt a strange sense of duty. Right. I didn't have time for questions. Wouldn't get a better distraction than this.

I ran as fast as I could, dodging falling boxes and shelving, ignoring the crashing and screams of pain behind me. Reaching the cell display, I pulled my phone out, plugged it in, and all the screens reading 'LOCKDOWN' lit up blue. "Ene!" I called.

Her form swam across them, trailing turquoise electricity. "When I'm done, we're going to the amusement park, 'kay?"

* * *

I came up on the address Momo had texted me directions to. Sure enough, there was 107 on the door in brass. Ene piped up in my ear as I tilted my camera up to the number. "Seriously, who the hell is she hanging out with? This seems really fishy."

"You're telling me," I mumbled. "But she was pretty insistent. We should at least check it out."

She huffed and I reached for the handle. "Don't blame me if you get killed."

Mentally preparing for the possibility of cultists, serial killers, or some kind of other unknown terror within this weirdly isolated building, I took a breath as I turned the handle.

The sight inside was definitely not that of an active murder ground. In fact, other than the eclectic decor and the bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, it looked shockingly normal. Momo was there, sprawled on one of two couches occupied by a group of strange teenagers. She shot me an impassive glance as the door opened, but otherwise remained engaged in her conversation with a young albino girl.

A young man in a black hoodie rose to greet me, an unnaturally wide grin stretched across his face. I realized with a jolt that this was the guy at the store. He looked a lot less trustworthy in proper lighting. "So you're Kisaragi's Onii-chan! Glad to see you were curious about us! And, like, you're welcome for earlier." He shot me a wink.

So were these guys the ones who knocked all the stuff over? They were my distraction? And Momo was mixed up with them?

I suddenly felt really, really, in over my head.

A girl with long hair and scary-looking eyes got up off the arm of the couch and walked up. She elbowed him in the side and I saw the smile flicker for a second, like a faulty connection. "Don't mind the idiot." He rubbed his side. She ignored him. "But really? You're interested?"

"Um . . ." I scanned the room again, taking in the people filling it. Momo hadn't said that coming here was really voluntary. I had more come out of a feeling of duty to keep her safe from potential danger than any curiosity about what she was involved in. But now, knowing that these people had some serious capacity for damage, I mostly wanted to run away. "Not really?"

The girl seemed to deflate at that. Clearly, I was supposed to be burning with a need to know about this shady-looking hideout.

"I mean, I guess I wanted to know what was going on," I amended, rubbing the back of my neck awkwardly. "Momo didn't tell me a lot." Plus, however scary they were, these guys were responsible for helping me out. I felt obligated to say thanks, at least. "Uh, thanks for the distraction, by the way."

She visibly perked up, then promptly recomposed her face into a mask of ambivalence. "No problem. I'm Kido. I'm the leader around here." She held out her hand, and I shook it.

"And I'm Kano, member number three." The guy in the black hood tilted his head politely, the grin still not leaving.

I frowned. That sounded a bit weird. Well, barring everything else. "Member? Of what?"

"Glad you asked." A ghost of a smile floated onto Kido's face. "This is the Mekakushi-Dan."

Kano jumped in. "We're a covert organization. We go on missions and stuff, acquire valuable information, evade the _eyes_ of the authorities." For a second, I could swear his eyes flashed red. "Today, we were getting Kisaragi a new phone when that whole situation happened."

"Yeah." I had some questions about that. "Um, how did you guys even manage that? I didn't see anyone there. No one did."

Kido's eyes softened. "Good catch. Maybe it'll be best to explain it starting with what you know." She nodded her head towards Momo. "You know your sister's not normal, right?"

I took a sharp breath. This had always been rough for her, and to hear it laid out so bluntly felt wrong. "Yeah," I said cautiously. "She attracts attention like you wouldn't believe."

"Have you ever looked at her eyes while she was attracting attention?"

"Yeah," I muttered at the floor. I was starting to get a faint picture. "They turn red. That's not normal at all, but somehow no one's ever-"

I looked up, and Kido was gone.

"What?"

Kano was trying to suppress laughter. The group on the couches was mostly in conversation, except for Momo, who was looking over at the empty space with a small grin. No one seemed like they thought it was weird that their leader had just disappeared out of thin air.

"Um, where is she?"

"Put it together," Kano sing-songed, lacing his fingers behind his head. "Do you need a hint?"

I didn't have time to answer before his eyes turned a bright red, and it all clicked in my head.

Red eyes. Momo's eyes. Momo's power. Kido's sudden disappearance.

"Kido . . . can turn invisible?"

The air before me shimmered and she came into view, smiling faintly. "Nice job. I've got the opposite power to your sister. You know how when she's using it, all you can do is notice her?"

I nodded. It was unnerving.

"I can make myself, and anyone around me, basically unnoticeable. I was concealing the rest of the Dan at the store, and that's how we helped you out."

That . . . made a lot of sense. Sure, it was crazy, but I lived with a girl who existed inside my computer. I'd handled worse. "What's your power?" I asked Kano. "Your eyes turned red too."

"So you are curious!" He grinned. "Kido, you explain it so much better than I do. Would you tell him?"

She sighed. "Kano can change the way he looks. He can 'deceive the eyes', make you see something other than how he actually appears."

I looked over to him, and saw that his face was running through a cycle of expressions faster than any human could have, settling back on his apparently-trademark grin. "Like that!"

"Right." Which left the rest of the group behind them, the remaining members of the Mekakushi-Dan. "Does everyone else have a power too?"

"Yeah." She turned to face them. "You guys wanna introduce yourselves?"

A young man in a green jumpsuit hopped up. "Sure!" He gave me a wave, smiling broadly. "I'm Seto, member number two. I can hear people's thoughts, when I want to."

"Good to meet you, Seto." I bowed in his direction, which he returned.

He put his hand on the albino girl's shoulder, and she looked over at me, her eyes wide. "I-I'm Marry," I heard her whisper faintly. "Nice to meet you."

"'Locking eyes'. She can turn people to stone, but only for a little bit," Kido supplemented. "She's also super shy."

Marry fell back against the couch, her face red. Momo got up and sat next to her, taking her hand and patting her head. It looked weird to see my sister expressing any kind of comforting behaviour. "Nice to meet you too, Marry," I said.

The only person left besides Momo was a kid, maybe around twelve, sitting on the far end of the other couch with his arms crossed. He looked over at me but didn't say anything. I worried faintly that I had offended him somehow.

"Hibiya." Kido walked over and sat down on the couch. Kano followed, and I sat down next to Momo.

Kido elbowed the kid gently, and he rolled his eyes. "I'm Hibiya. Momo dragged me in too. I've got 'focusing eyes', which means I can see stuff from far away."

"And all that's left is our newest member. He should be out soon," Seto said and sat down at Marry's other side.

"So that's the Mekakushi-Dan, Shintaro!" Kano gave me a beaming smile. "I do hope you'll join us."

"Let's do it, Master!" Ene's energetic voice came out of Momo's phone at full blast with zero warning. I jumped and nearly punched my sister in the face. "This sounds fun! You never do anything interesting!"

"Who's _that?_ " Kido asked, shooting me a vaguely curious glare.

"I'm Ene, super pretty cyber-girl that lives in Master's computer, and I'm _so_ bored of him! C'mon, we're joining!"

Everyone but Momo must have had no clue what on earth she was, so I would have to explain her at some point, but in the meantime I just didn't have the willpower to fight. "Sure," I sighed, sinking into the couch. "What the hell."

She let loose a victorious whoop. "I want to go to the amusement park!"

A door opened across the room, and a soft, slow voice spoke up. "Amusement park?"

"Konoha-san!" Seto waved at him. "We've got new members! This is Shintaro and Ene!"

Konoha?

That name sounded . . . familiar. As I looked up, I understood why. I'd only ever seen that face, that white hair, those pink eyes, that costume, through a screen, but the recognition was immediate.

". . . Haruka?" Ene and I asked at the same time.

He just looked blankly at us. "Who?"

"Ene?" I asked at the phone, disbelieving. "How do you-"

"C'mon, Haruka, it's me," she said, ignoring me. It sounded like she was in pain.

"I . . . I don't know you." He walked over to the table and crouched to look at Momo's phone screen. "Who are you?"

She said nothing. I could see a blue figure on the screen, but it wasn't moving. As he looked down, unblinking, I watched her form swim away with a noise that sounded vaguely like a sob.

"Um, she's gone." Konoha, a blank look on his face, held up the phone. "Who was she?"

I could only stare at him. "She . . . she's my friend, I think." How was he alive? How did he look like _this_?

Something flickered in his eyes at that. "Friend?"

"Well, she calls me 'Master' and stuff and we fight all the time, but I guess that's what you'd call her." I shrugged uneasily, still shaken. Clearly he was here anyway, and clearly he didn't know anything. Who I was, who he was, who Ene was, apparently, but he was alive nonetheless.

Inside me, I knew the only option was to accept him as my friend again.

"So, Konoha, do you . . . want to be friends too?"

The faint flicker in his eyes brightened to a dim light. "Friends?" he asked again.

I sighed. "Yeah. Why not."

He looked at me for a second before a small smile spread across his face. "Shintaro is my friend." He nodded as if confirming it to himself, and held up his arm like he wanted to pump his fist in the air, and looked at me expectantly. Putting it together, I held my arm up to touch his, and I felt like I was making some unbreakable pact. Oddly, I didn't mind it. It was just a quiet, peaceful sensation of deep, deep friendship.

A gust of warm air hit me from somewhere. It reminded me that it was summer.

Summer, my mind whispered, drawing back images of heat and sunset and walking over a hill on the way home. A hand held out to me. A friend I'd left behind.

I wouldn't leave this one, I promised myself in that instant. I wouldn't leave a friend behind ever again.

* * *

The dark Konoha was on the ground, hunched over and crying, a gun at his side.

"Konoha?" Marry asked cautiously, hiding behind Momo. "Are you there?"

The person, whoever was in control, let out a tortured howl. "NO! Don't kill my friends!" Konoha's softer voice came to the forefront, though he sounded like he was in indescribable pain, like he was trying to wrestle for a hold on his own mind.

"I'll kill who I want to!" The voice became the angrier one, the sound of the darkness that had invaded.

"No!" Kido shouted, although she didn't step forward. We'd all seen the things our friend's body could do, and there was no wonder she didn't want to face a nearly indestructible android a million times stronger than any person alive.

We watched in horror as the torment on his face twisted, becoming a sickening grin.

"Game over."

He pulled the gun up to his head, still panting, and stared me down. I had the deep sudden feeling that, somewhere inside, Konoha or even Haruka was taking the reins, just a little. In that instant, I only knew that I couldn't let them die. Not without at least trying to save them.

I watched his grip shift on the gun, watched it dig a little deeper into the skin that I wasn't so sure was indestructible anymore. His hair fell in front of his eyes, obscuring their eerie yellow.

It happened so fast.

The not-Konoha - I was almost certain my friend was not in control then, although I knew he was still in there - tensed his finger on the trigger, smiling shakily.

I didn't even care. I bolted.

I didn't see his finger move and I didn't hear the bang, but by the time I reached him, the bullet was fired.

Fired directly into my temple instead.

As I fell and my vision went dark, I could have sworn I saw his yellow eyes widen in shock. For a second, I caught a glimpse of Haruka's gentleness in them, and I wondered if any one of the people in that body had someone they would have died for.

* * *

I woke up.

It was so familiar, I wasn't sure I wasn't dreaming.

I was in our old classroom.

But I'd been shot. Hadn't I? I'd died taking a bullet for . . . Konoha, or the body of Konoha, whatever darkness had taken over him. Although he'd been there too, for a moment. Whose bullet had I taken? Whose choice had I stopped?

I only hoped that the dark him wasn't killing anyone. They didn't deserve to die because of my decisions. I already had one death too many on my hands, I didn't think I could bear another.

Well, it was my turn to die this time. It only seemed fair.

I looked around, my head pounding, wondering where I truly was. I only saw three people in the space. A small woman with curly dark hair, a young man in a black hoodie, and someone even more familiar than the room. My breath caught at the sight of her, standing there with bright red eyes.

Ayano. Of course.

She was behind the other two. I started to walk toward her, and the young man looked up, drawing my attention.

It was . . . me.

He was on the ground, his knees tucked to his chest. He had a hand laid on his neck and, when his eyes met mine for that brief instant, I knew that he had done what I had never been able to.

He'd taken the scissors I'd always imagined ending it with, the ones with the red handles, exactly the colour of her scarf, and put them through his neck, I was sure of it. I'd put it off, I'd survived. But he clearly hadn't.

He looked sad and broken. I wondered for a moment what had pushed him over the edge, but my eyes flicked up again and I no longer cared.

Ayano was waiting with those eyes.

I passed by the me on the floor, thinking only of the girl I'd known two summers ago, the girl who'd thrown herself off the roof, the girl I'd never gotten to say goodbye to. The girl whose death, I realized as I neared, I no longer blamed myself for.

She was by the window. I walked up to her.

She tilted her head up. "I died. I'm sorry." Her voice sounded the same, her smile was the same, she looked the same, but it all seemed wrong somehow, unfamiliar.

It was me that had changed.

"I forgive you."

She smiled gently, looking down. "Shall we say goodbye?"

I smiled back. "Yeah. I think I can." I could move on. I didn't need to live for her anymore.

With a soft gasp, she lifted her red eyes, shocked. Then she laughed, and I heard something shatter behind me, but I didn't turn. The past was being put to rest right here.

Keeping her eyes on me, Ayano pulled her scarf off and threw it around my neck, smiling as she hauled me down to push her forehead against mine.

"Remember for me," she whispered.

A smile claimed my face. "Like I could forget."

She laughed one final time before shattering herself, the pieces of her body filling the air. Surprisingly, I felt no sorrow, only a need to keep living for the friends I'd made.

I touched her scarf, felt the warmth of it, and realized my eyes were warm too, almost burning. Momo had talked about this feeling. This heat came with a power.

 _This_ was what she meant.

I closed my eyes, let the burning take over, and I remembered. I remembered everything.

A whirlwind of memories filled my mind, faces and smiles and deaths of friends, some I knew and some I didn't. The same few days, repeated nearly endlessly. Everything always coming back to August 15, drowning the world in heat and the buzz of cicadas.

I looked up and the classroom was crumbling.

The memories washed over me as I tried to think of how I could save my friends with these eyes.

* * *

I woke up.

The face was newly familiar.

Kido had my head in her lap and a hand wound up, seemingly to slap me in the face.

"Oh my god!" she yelled as I gasped in the fresh air, pushing me away and dumping me on the ground.

I rubbed my shoulder. "Ow." Looking up at her, I saw that she was sitting on a bench. Momo was slumped over beside her. Marry, clinging to Kido, seemed to be mid-sob when her eyes shot open and she switched to a shocked smile. Momo gasped, bolting upright. The rest of the Dan wasn't there. I didn't have the capacity to wonder where they were.

"Hey," I muttered.

Momo hopped off the bench to kneel over me. "Onii-chan!"

"Yup." I coughed. My throat was really dry. I wanted a soda. "How-ugh-how long was I out?"

"Um . . ." Kido glanced at Momo, disbelief still etched around both their eyes. "You were dead. Like, your brains were on the ground."

"O-oh."

That explained why it hurt so fucking much. It explained less why I was breathing right now, though.

"But then this . . . thing happened. Like, a really weird thing." Momo's eyebrows knit together as though in deep thought. "Kido called it something . . . Kagerou Daze?"

"It has to do with our powers," Kido said lowly. "All of us died on August 15th. We've all had a run-in with this phenomenon. It's like a big mouth that swallows two people, and only one makes it back." She spoke with an even tone, but her jaw was tense. "I guess you were the lucky one this time."

"Your body was gone." Momo's eyes were watering. "We had no clue what happened. You disappeared, then Konoha collapsed, and when the mouth thing went away, he was back to normal."

I sat up and looked around for Konoha. He was sitting on the ground a little ways off, looking morosely at his hands.

"Your body came back too. Kido was just trying to wake you up when you . . ."

"Came back to life. Right."

I coughed again. My head was pounding. Was the darkness the 'other person' Kido was talking about? Was it Haruka? What happened? What had I seen?

Suddenly my eyes burned and memories flooded into my mind. I saw the Mekakushi-Dan, smiling and laughing. I saw other people, too, ones I didn't recognize. I remembered days we spent together, plans we made to take down the bad guy, missions we went on. I didn't think any of it had happened today, but I wasn't sure. It was hard to tell what was this morning and what was several worlds ago. Did Mom make breakfast? Did we hike through the forest? Did I go shopping for rabbit food?

None of it made any sense. It was like Medusa living peacefully in the mountains. It was like a girl who existed inside a computer. It was like dying and coming back to life.

I shut my eyes and tucked my head between my knees. The world was too bright. Remembering hurt like hell.

"I think I saw something back there," I mumbled. "It . . . Ayano?" Her smile, sketchy, swam into my head.

"Nee-chan?" I heard Kido whisper, but my eyes grew hot again and I couldn't recognize that the words meant anything. Momo put an arm around my shoulder. I barely felt it.

These days always ended in death.

Shot, throat torn out, drowned, blown up, head ripped off, bled out on my bed, chest crushed, car crash, anything and everything, again and again. The smell of blood was in them all, and the back of my throat rose up in instinct. It felt like someone had put their hand into my stomach and twisted everything. I think I made a gurgle of pain.

"You okay?" Kido asked. Her voice was back to something calm. For a second, she pulled me into reality.

"I . . ."

A slideshow of images flashed by of Kido's eyes, dead and empty. Momo's bloodstained hair. Marry crying.

"I don't know."

She huffed, her eyes soft, and patted my head. "You don't need to be."

"Thanks," I said, swallowing back the urge to cry.

None of these memories had a happy ending. I had the understanding that this world had reset a hundred, a thousand, a million times. It didn't matter how many exactly. I just knew that none of the times before this one had ended in us living full, happy lives.

So I didn't really think this would be the timeline where we all made it out alive. I wasn't enough of an optimist to believe that. But, at least, I hoped that I could make these friends again the next time around. They seemed like good people. If I had to die, I think I would have picked them to do it with.

For now, though, we were all here. We were still breathing. And as long as we had that, there was the hope that we could make this life the one where we all survived.

I groaned as I got to my feet. My head was killing me, but I felt like I needed to stand up. I had to find some way to help my friends. Couldn't really do that from the ground.

Unfortunately, my legs disagreed, and I crumpled back to the pavement, taking Momo down with me. She complained but I ignored her until she shoved me away, then I shot her a glare.

Okay. Maybe I could sit down a little longer. I had just been dead, after all.

"Thanks," I muttered, to no one in particular.

"No problem," Kido said.

Against my better judgement, I smiled. It was nice to have someone just . . . be there, in the background but on my team. I hadn't had that in a long time.

I took a good look around for the first time. The sun was just setting, and the sky was red. We were in a park in the residential area of the city, and the trees were dyed orange in the light.

No one else was around. It was just us. I liked the peacefulness.

I sat for a little while, catching my breath and trying to get a minor grip on the memories flowing through my mind. They quieted a little once I calmed down. It was bearable now. Not pleasant, but bearable. I could live through bearable; I'd lived through worse. I'd lived through so much worse.

Kido rose with a sigh. "Guess we should get going."

"Yeah, I bet everyone else is wondering where we are." Momo got up too.

"Are you coming, Konoha-san?" Marry asked.

With a nod, he got to his feet and walked over to us. "I'm hungry."

In spite of everything, I smiled. That was just like Haruka. It gave me hope that my old friend wasn't completely lost within this new one.

Kido held out her hand to help me up. "C'mon."

"Thanks."

I took it, and as she pulled me to my feet, I thought yet again of Ayano. I couldn't go back and take her hand too. All I could do was move ahead and remember her.

Like I could forget.

I pulled my phone out to check the time as we started to walk back to the base, and I caught the date too. August 15. 8:47 p.m. She died today too, but it didn't make me too sad. I had accepted it, and I was pretty sure I would be able to move on.

I think she would have been proud of me for that.


End file.
